Episode 254: Dr. John Jaquish

Drs. Tro, Brian, and John Jaquish discuss the biomedical sector, leadership and interest issues within the American Medical Association, as well as the harm that corruption and lack of integrity may cause.

Thank you for joining us for another episode of the Low Carb MD Podcast. Dr. John Jaquish began his experience in life sciences after being told by his Mother that she had been diagnosed with osteoporosis. John, in an effort to help his mother, created a device to place axial loading through bone to safely cause osteogenic loading events.

After successfully reversing his Mother’s osteoporosis, as part of his doctoral dissertation in biomedical engineering research at Rushmore University, he conducted four years of testing with human subjects focused on user comfort, biomechanics, and optimal musculoskeletal stimulation. Next, the device he designed was put into production, and has since been placed in over 300 clinics worldwide. Osteogenic loading has now helped over 30,000 individuals with their bone health.

Dr. Jaquish is currently advancing osteogenic loading research and speaking worldwide about its implications, as well as developing other biotechnology devices and products that will aid in the advanced health and wellbeing of people all around the world. He formerly a member of the Board of Directors of American Bone Health, and the editorial board of the Journal of Steroids and Hormonal Science.

In this conversation, Drs. Tro, Brian, and John talk about how John got into the biomedical field, leadership and interest issues in the American Medical Association, the damage of corruption and lack-of-integrity, the peculiar case in many Western countries of the poorest people being the fattest, why cardio is actually not conducive to weight-loss, over-eating and environmental factors relating to metabolic disease, why Dr. John switched to bands in lieu of weights, why variable resistance is better than weight training, and keeping a critically thinking mind when you take in exercise and nutrition marketing.

Full Transcript

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: Hello, and welcome back to the Low Carb MD Podcast. We have a guest, believe it or not. Isn’t that kind of cool?

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: Yeah. We finally made it happen. We finally connected. If you’ve been living under a rock, this is Dr. John Jaquish. You’ve seen him. I just called him the Tony Stark of … I should say, the Tony Stark of Metabolic Health. Why? Because he’s invented so many cool things.

One, OsteoStrong. We have one down the block. If you don’t know, and we want to go into this, it’s about ways to improve your bone strength. His book is awesome. It shatters everything we’ve been told about weightlifting. Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time. I think it’s a Wall Street Journal bestseller.

And if you haven’t seen, he’s also the founder of X3. We’re big fans of bands, and we’ve talked about band use on this podcast and again and again. So, we’re happy to have you here. Happy to talk with you. I’m a huge fan of your Instagram. I know you’re a low-carb guy, and you’re bald, so it makes me love you even more. Do you know?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it makes being this handsome a lot easier, when you don’t have to screw around with hair.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: Yeah. Shampoo, right?

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: You guys are convincing me. I waste all my time looking at my gray hair.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: If you’re keeping your hair, that’s one thing. When you’re not keeping your hair, then just don’t have it be pathetic. Just take it all off.

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: Yeah. Yeah. Just go out with dignity. I agree, man. I’ve always thought that too. It’s like, “Okay, there’ll be a time my look changes. That’s the way it is.”

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: When do you start going bald? Well, let’s go on that. When did you start going bald?

Dr. John Jaquish: I probably started noticing … I’d take a shower, and just look at my fingers, and hair was coming out. So, it was fast. Maybe 23, or 24.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: Yeah. That’s funny. Same thing with me. 17, 18.

Dr. John Jaquish: You start getting thin, and it was like I never got to the point where I lost it. It just didn’t look good anymore. Especially, I remember I was at this fraternity event. Or actually, it’s an event that a sorority throws. A charity event, a swimming competition called Anchor Splash. Delta Gamma throws it at my school.

So I was one of the competitors, and I remember getting out of the pool and people looking at me, and they’re like, “Wow, your hair is thin.” Because it’s wet, and it clumps together. And they didn’t say it to hurt my feelings, but it’s just kind of startling because the year before it wasn’t like that.

And shortly after that, I was like, “Okay, I can just shave my head, and it’s not going to be a thing anymore.”

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: Yeah. I’m the same way. Brian, you’re lucky. Well, you’re going, Brian. It may come to-

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: Yeah, it’s going, man. I know. Whatever.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: You know what?

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: Happily married. I don’t have to impress anyone.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: You save a lot of money on shampoo though.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yep.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: So the place I wanted to start was one, your inspiration. I’ve seen you talk about it, and I saw an interview. I’ve read about this. How did you get started in this field, and can you talk a little bit about what your … I mean, clearly you want to make an impact in metabolic health, nutrition, physical health, and wellness. Right?

Dr. John Jaquish: Right.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: But you don’t grow up with that. Well, actually, in your case, maybe you did.

Dr. John Jaquish: No, no. I didn’t. I didn’t. My father’s an engineer, and so I always liked engineering, but I always found what you can do with the human body and what the capability of the human body can be to be fascinating. And I always thought it was very ironic that most people never, I mean, even come close to realizing their physical performance potential.

Now, that’s relative. For a little old lady, it might just be getting out of a chair without having to use her hands.

But we just don’t seem all that interested in tapping that potential from a medical-community perspective.

So that fascinated me, but I realized very quickly that the fitness industry was wrong about almost everything. Also, the fitness industry exists to sell gym memberships. Its sort of like the grocery industry is just trying to maximize revenue. They’d rather you come back every other day and buy Oreo cookies. Those are higher-margin products. So-

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: Can we talk about that for one second? Can we talk about that for one second?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yep.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: I know everybody’s going to say, “Tro, you should shut up.” But think about it as a model. As a model, a gym makes money when you sign up and don’t go.

Dr. John Jaquish: Mm-hmm. Well, one-

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: Exactly what you’re planning on.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: Right? What we want, and what I love about OsteoStrong, for example, is, we’re going to show you your bone health improving. We’re going to show it to you. We’re going to show you our value. That’s something we need in medicine too. I mean, me and Brian have talked about it. Most doctors, come in, and they see for you seven minutes. “See you later.” Or, “See you in two weeks.” That’s it.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. A lot of them talk about positive outcomes, and you hear about their practice, and you go, “Where? Show me.” And they really can’t. They aren’t measuring anything. Now, what surprises me, is that I’m just kind of shocked in general, people can’t figure it out. If your doctor doesn’t help you, maybe you should find another doctor instead of just being frustrated with your health.

My regular general practitioner is very interesting in that he’s the most standard Western medicine person I think, I ever could have found. He thinks everybody should be vegan and prescribes statins to anybody who will fill the prescription. He’s pretty much-doing everything wrong. Doesn’t read the research. I bring him research. If I stand there and I say, “Read this, and I’m going to stand here while you read it,” then he’ll read it. But other than that, it goes right in the garbage can.

Because in his mind, he’s a manual laborer. He’s paid when he’s seeing patients. If he’s not seeing patients, he’s not getting paid. So reading a research study is just a waste of his time. And he’s very comfortable with prescribing statins to everybody that has high cholesterol, prescribing blood thinners. So my mother goes to the same physician, and I think he had her on seven different medications, and I just went in there one day and ripped his head off. So now, all of a sudden she’s on one.

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: That’s crazy.

Dr. John Jaquish: Because none of them were necessary. And it’s great to keep a guy like that around because you get to understand just how bad things have gotten. Because he’s not the problem. The AMA is the problem. Where’s the leadership?

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: There is no leadership.

Dr. John Jaquish: No. Or you could say the leadership is Nabisco, and Kellogg’s, and Pfizer, the snack food companies. Snack food companies are now sponsoring medical congress meetings. So I’ve been to meetings in the bone density space sponsored by Tropicana orange juice, fortified with calcium. We all know it’s not usable by the body in that form, but because they sponsor the conference, we can’t talk about that.

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: It is very frustrating. In all of our med school lectures, we have grand rounds. Guess who sponsored them? All of them are sponsored by pharma. No one’s paying for that. These guys are flying in from all over, and they’re … And it’s not the frontline doctors necessarily. It’s the leadership that’s brainwashed. And then they come and teach you and they go, “Oh, but this guy’s the expert. And he says this, so it must be true.”

Talk about OsteoStrong. How often do I hear doctors talk about doing weight-bearing exercises for osteoporosis? They’re like, “No, here. Just inject this drug or take this pill every day.” We don’t talk about lifestyle change and what we can do to improve that.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: So it sounds like you’re brought up by an engineer, and we’ve had so many engineers on this podcast. It’s always them who are thinking critically, not the doctors. I mean, pretty systematically that’s been true. So you’re thinking critically, and you’re looking at this fitness industry, and you’re like, “This is wrong.”

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. So many things in medicine were wrong. Because I got started in medicine. I developed a medical device that reverses osteoporosis better than any drug that’s ever been trialed. So, I could see that a lot of things were wrong with medicine.

Now, the great part about physicians is, if you get them to take the time to read the evidence, you can win them over. They’re not difficult to communicate with face-to-face or in a lecture-type environment, but at face value, they pretty much roll their eyes at everything. And I understand why.

For most people who are trying to sell health solutions, it’s just a bunch of bull(beep). I could use some examples. There are so many things, like microcirculation, and the PEMF mats. Do they do something? Yeah. Do they do as much as the marketing would suggest? No.

So, I understand why a lot of doctors roll their eyes when they hear about something new. So you got to convince them that, “You need to listen to this.” So once that happened, OsteoStrong started growing. And we have hundreds of referring physicians to the 160 different locations of OsteoStrong in 12 different countries.

So, very successful business. But then, so I developed osteoporosis devices to treat my mother’s osteoporosis. She had early-onset menopause, and then she had earlier osteoporosis, and she was just sad about it. Like, “I’m not going to be able to hike or play tennis.” That was her two favorite things and gardening. She was afraid of fragility fractures. So she quit doing everything she loved doing, and coincidentally, that was the only way to get her to do any exercise at all.

So now, she’s not exercising because she has a low bone mass. And of course, her physicians say, “You need weight-bearing exercise, but nothing with impact.” There has never been a worse recommendation in medicine because the only way you can get to the minimum-effective dose of a force to go through the body is with high impact.

So, the minimum-dose response of the hip joint in the human body is 4.2 multiples of body weight. The strongest people in the world can’t even lift that. So now, with impact, yeah.

People who box jump far exceed 4.2 multiples of body weight. Now, it’s not that every person with osteoporosis should be box jumping, but that’s why I developed a medical device to give us the benefits of impact without the risks of impact. That ended up being very effective, and as I said, physicians immediately began to refer. They did not push back at all.

And I don’t think there’s any necessary conspiracy from the pharma industry, other than the fact that it’s obvious pharma wants to sell their products. But I never got an intimidating letter from somebody saying, “We’re going to break your kneecaps if you keep-”

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: Fosamax never sent the goons after you?

Dr. John Jaquish: No. No, they never did. No. I did have dinner at the World Congress on Osteoporosis after I did my biggest presentation with one of the VPs from Eli Lilly. What he said, he was like, “Everyone’s impressed. Your solution’s real.” I was like, “Yeah. Everybody’s a gentleman. That’s great.” So I don’t think it’s corrupt by design, but the design of the industry did yield a landscape that facilitates corruption.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: Yeah. I agree. I agree.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. I don’t think anybody was like, “Okay, we’ve designed a system where we can collect all their money, and keep them sick in perpetuity so we get to sell them (beep) forever.” That conversation never went down, I don’t think.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: Can I pause on that for one sec, Brian?

Dr. John Jaquish: Sure.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: I got pictures from patients of the hospital food they got, and I collected some others from colleagues of mine. And it was a bunch of French toast, and this and that for breakfast.

Dr. John Jaquish: All sugar. Everything is sugar. Sugar with more sugar on top.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: But here’s the thing. You say it’s not a conspiracy, but there are people there. There is a food preparer there who’s devoted themselves to preparing great food to nourish people. There’s a dietician there who has devoted their career to helping people, a nurse who’s devoted her career to helping people, or his career. There’s a physician there who ordered that diet, who said, “I am going to heal.” So, how is it that that meal passed through so many people? Do you know what it is? It’s, we accept corruption. We accept it. We accept a gym is going to go collect our money, and we’re not going to go. We accept it.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: Right? So I think when you say, “I don’t think somebody in that hospital is thinking, ‘Well, let me just kill Aunt Betsy with hyperglycemia,’” I agree with you. I don’t think that, but we’ve allowed evil here.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah. There are plenty of dangerous things that killed millions of people just by looking the other way.

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: Yeah, and it may not even be that. I think it just gets handed down. So your attending tells you this is the way it’s done, and you just write the order that we … Tro, a sliding-scale insulin in the hospital. All these things that people do. And they say, “Oh, your French toast.” And the sugar goes crazy. “Oh, they need more insulin. Give them more insulin.” It’s just, no one says, “Wait a minute. How about I don’t give him the French toast? Do I need to give him less insulin that day? Can we save money on insulin?” If it was a financial thing where people got it, they would say, “Oh, you know how much money we’d save on insulin a year by just not doing that in the hospital?”

Dr. John Jaquish: There’s a problem. Do you think a hospital wants to admit that they should be responsible for giving people healthy nutrition that might cost them $20 per day per patient, where now they might spend 25 cents per day per patient?

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: Yeah. That’s correct.

Dr. John Jaquish: We also have a government … In fact, all Western governments are pushing toward socialism. If they are all suddenly responsible for feeding their people, they want to spend pennies per day, not $20 per day. So, they’re always going to push for the cheapest. So, we’re not told carbohydrates are good for us for any reason other than the source material of carbohydrate products is cheaper than topsoil. Cheaper than dirt. That’s why they like that direction. That’s why they’re not going to admit that a more l-carbohydrate ketogenic approach is superior.

So I believe, unfortunately, this is going to be the diet of the why people. I think people are going to live on ketogenic nutrition, and the people who are on a budget are unfortunately going to be eating the worst. In the United States, this is not true of most other countries, but in the United States, our poorest people are our fattest people. So, I mean, they’re not starving.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: In most Western countries, by the way. Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah. Probably. Probably, yeah. It’s certainly like that in the United Kingdom. France doesn’t seem to be so bad. Germany’s pretty bad. So, we’ve conditioned people to believe that eating carbohydrates and just junk food is … Think about it this way. When I go to a restaurant, and I order steak, and they’re like, “Okay, that comes with mashed potatoes and whatever.” Some vegetable, broccoli, or whatever. And I’m like, “No, no. Leave all that off. I just want the steak.” And they look at me and they’re like, “Are you on some special diet?” And I look at them and I say, “No. I eat healthy food. That’s why I’m healthy.”

That’s an everyday-for-the-rest-of-my-life thing. Everybody else is eating junk food all meals, every day. And I say this to the average waiter, and they kind of first look at me like I’m crazy. And then when they come back to the table a little bit later they’re like, “I thought about what you said. You’re kind of right.” We just eat all the (beep) we’re not supposed to eat, we were told years ago we weren’t supposed to eat, like French fries. French fries are served with everything. Why? Oil-fried sugar. Vegetable-oil-fried sugar. It’s no different than a (beep) candy bar.

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: Yeah, and a lot of people say, “I don’t eat sugar.” But it’s like they’re eating all those things all the time that breaks down the sugar, and they just don’t get it. They go, “It’s not sweet.” I’ll show them how much sugar’s in a large French fry from one of the fast food restaurants, and they’re blown away. They’re like, “That much sugar? How can that be in there?” That’s crazy to them.

Dr. John Jaquish: How about rice?

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: Rice is a disaster.

Dr. John Jaquish: People think rice is healthy. Yeah.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: Also fried in vegetable oil, most of the time. Right?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: So, here’s the thing. We accept suboptimal nutrition. It’s like everybody thinks that that’s normal. We accept suboptimally. Most doctors are like, “You have osteoporosis. Take vitamin D and calcium, and go to the gym.” That’s what they say. Go work out. And then they measure it again, and now you’re osteoporotic because you went to the gym, you signed up for a membership, and you never went. Right?

Dr. John Jaquish: Or you did it, and because the physicians don’t understand what the minimum-dose response is, that no matter how hard somebody works out, they don’t get the result.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: But we’ve accepted this. So, help me understand. So we’ve accepted this, and we’ve accepted no accountability for that advice.

Dr. John Jaquish: No.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: So one of the things that I’ve noticed this year, is how many patients who have the X3 … And it hit me that not everybody wants to go to a global gym and spend 10 hours a week. Nobody wants to do that. Yet here we are, as physicians, telling people to go to the gym. Because we gave them some incredible hurdle they couldn’t meet.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, and gym-

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: We set them up to fail.

Dr. John Jaquish: Gyms are offensive environments for most people. I mean, I kind of roll my eyes at that word, because I think so many people are just offended by all kinds of stuff that you shouldn’t be offended by. But okay, if that’s the landscape that we’re standing on, then let’s talk about it. So gyms are great if you’re in your 20s and you’re great-looking because they’re … And this is a direct quote from one of the largest gym owners in the world. He told me, “My business is nightclubs with treadmills, and I don’t even need to serve alcohol.” Because the drug that’s there is attractive.

I got some loud, bumping music, and they’re all enjoying giving each other herpes. And I said, “Well, what about the heavy people that go to sign up?” And he says, “Well, we actually train our staff, tell the heavy people to go to a different gym.” Think about that. “Because nobody wants to work out with fat people,” is what he told me.

And I’m thinking, “Wow. The gym industry is just terrible.” Selling memberships, that’s all that counts. Selling personal training, but there are no results guaranteed there either. The fact that cardio is not giving people what they think they’re getting, it’s terrible for weight loss.

That’s the only reason anybody bothers with it. This is a set of scientific findings that have been ignored for 40 years. 40 (beep) years we’ve known that cardio increases cortisol chronically, and cortisol does two things. It gets rid of muscle and preserves body fat for as long as possible. You are going to be as fat as possible as long as possible by being consistent with cardio. What the (beep)?

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: Yeah. It’s amazing. And then when you tell people, “Hey, look at weights here. Do this. Look at you. Look at Ben Bocchicchio.” And people will go, “No. No. You’re going to bulk up too much.” And I’m all, “Well, you’re 300 pounds. You’re probably not going to put on that much muscle where it’s going to be an issue.” But their correlation, and we’ve seen this in our practices,is the more visceral fat you have, the harder it is to put on muscle mass. And the less muscle mass you have, the harder it is to get rid of visceral fat.

So I can look at someone’s muscle mass when we’re doing body comps, and I’ll say, “They’re probably going to have a low visceral fat based on their muscle mass, high visceral fat based on very low muscle mass.” It seems to be very, very interesting.

Dr. John Jaquish: It is that statistic right there where I’ve kind of changed my mind a little bit on testosterone replacement therapy for both men and women. Before I just sort of had a stance like, “Let your levels be whatever your levels are.”

Problem is, with the abusive nutrition that most of us have had, even if you change it, it diminishes testicular function or ovarian function to the point where you’re not producing nearly enough. And the reason people get the prescription, typically, is they’re low.

And they’re low because of all the environmental stressors. Light bulbs contribute to this. LEDs are even worse. Of course, almost everywhere you go, it’s all LED lighting now.

The amount of estrogen-increasing foods, like soy in different vegan products, are sort of weaseling their way into everything. Because like I said, they’re cheaper than dirt. And that’s the ultimate problem with nutrition, is they’re only looking for cheap. They’re not looking for good-for-you. Health is way down on the list.

If you watch the sequel to Super Size Me, where the main character from Super Size Me starts in fast food restaurant, he talks to the restaurant consultants. And they’re telling him, “You need to make everything green. You need to talk about green. Everything’s green.” I mean, they were selling fried chicken with grill marks painted on, but it’s fried. And they’re painted with food coloring. Grill marks painted on to make it look like it’s grilled, and then they’ve got all kinds of goo going all over the menu.

So the idea is, the food is worse for you than it’s ever been. But as long as people think they’re getting their greens, in quotes, then they think they’re healthy. And probably one of the biggest problems I find with the typical marginally-interested-in-fitness-type person is, they’re unwilling to learn anything.

So, it’s just sort of general societal laziness. Guess what? The human body is way more complicated than whatever is going to fit on one little image. So, learn about it. Don’t just be ignorant and then feel like you’re a victim of your age.

I’m 46 years old. I have fraternity brothers that look 20 years older than me, and they’re dying. They’re diabetic. They have all kinds of problems. One of them has had to have toes amputated from diabetic neuropathy, and we used to be pretty much the same guy in college.

But I went on pursuing a smarter approach to nutrition, and the guy I’m talking about just ate pizza every day. He never got fat either. He’s just a disaster because the nutrition choices were choices without nutrition.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: Can I challenge some of this? So, I’m a big believer. I’ve seen maybe, I don’t know, 4,000 people with severe-obesity diabetes. “Severe-obesity diabetes. Come and help me.” I haven’t met one person who wanted it. Not one.

If you asked me when I was 250 pounds, I would’ve said to you, “I would do anything to lose weight. I would do anything.” Now, I went on to do anything. But these people, most of the people who struggle with weight, who struggle, there is, just like you described, that system. The global gym that wants to take their money. Hospitals are designed to care not care. They live in a poor area, or maybe they grew up without resources. They don’t have the time and energy to put in the education that all of us have done. And they’re stuck. They’re stuck, and then they blame themselves. It’s like, “It’s my fault.”

Dr. John Jaquish: And we tell them to blame themselves. We tell them, “Oh, yeah. Well, you’re just a glutton, I guess.” And it’s like, “No, the food is engineered to be addictive.”

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: So, they don’t have that insight. It’s like somebody who grew up in a crack house blaming themselves for doing crack. Yes, they could pick themselves up. Yes, they could get out of there. But it’s not that easy. Our entire world is predicated around eating.

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: When you look at the government programs when you see what they’re giving these kids, it’s all juice, and crackers, and chips. And you look at it-

Dr. John Jaquish: Sugar with sugar on top.

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: And it’s horrible stuff, and you go, “No wonder.” Plus, I think the other thing we’ve all touched about. If you’re in a stressful environment, if people are selling crack around you all the time and you don’t know if you’re going to be homeless that week or whatever, and violence in the home, that’s a stressful situation. We have tons of data on this. That high cortisol, chronic stress, all those things are a factor. And then we throw on top crappy food on top of it. Forget it. They have no chance.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: Game over. Yeah. It’s game over. So now, coming back to testosterone, what you were saying, and I want to tie it in here. Testosterone replacement has been shown to increase that resiliency, that drive to fight.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s why I’m so in favor of it because I used to encourage people who wanted it. Like, “Your levels are really low.” My levels were 163 nanograms to the deciliter. That was total testosterone.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: This is at 28 years old. I got hit in rugby, just nailed in the crotch. Somebody’s shoulder came up right into me, and some testicular damage.

So basically, I was having cardiac muscle atrophy and I was having palpitations. And I was playing semi-pro rugby. What the hell? The cardiologist says, “Oh, your heart’s not very strong.” And I’m like “It’s like 80 minutes of running every other day. What are you talking about?”

Sprinting and stopping, high-intensity intervals. That’s what a rugby game is. And the cardiologist, fortunately, was a smart guy. He goes, “I bet your testosterone is screwed up from that hit you told me about.”

Sure enough, it was. I got the prescription. Oh my God. Everything health-wise got better. I didn’t put on a ton of muscle. So before people were like, “I don’t know if I should pursue testosterone replacement.”

And I said, “Well if you need it.” But most people, if they even have 400 nanograms to the deciliter … I know between 800 and 1,200, or 600 and 1,200 are optimal. But, “Hey, that’s good enough. You can do great.”

Now I feel differently because everybody from a nutritional standpoint has been put at such a disadvantage. And they’ve had their testosterone lowered, they can’t bring it back by just eating healthy.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: Tell me what you think. I think it’s to make animals docile for winter. You get over-fat, you get over-big. You get over-big, that fat cells now convert the testosterone to estrogen, and it’s to go to sleep. Don’t fight anymore. Don’t be ferocious. Don’t be fierce. Go to sleep.

Dr. John Jaquish: A grizzly bear gives itself Type 2 diabetes every year before its hibernation. So, they eat nothing but animals when they come out of hibernation. Right at the end of the hot season, in the fall, they start eating honey. They start eating berries. They won’t eat honey earlier in the year. But they try and get as much fructose as possible to get as fat as possible. And of course, if you look at Type 2 diabetes as a function of the body as opposed to dysfunction, it’s your body helping you get as fat as possible to survive the winter. So, you’re right.

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: And you get rid of muscle tissue too, so that you can hibernate longer. Because you have a ton of muscle, you’re not going to be able to hibernate very well.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s right.

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: So, it’s a survival thing. But the problem is, we never get winter anymore. So many of us, it’s like we have a chronic food environment where we’re getting ready to hibernate, but we never do.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: So, I’m a big believer in testosterone. And even now, the guidelines are much more in favor. Even women. Just two years ago, in women, low-dose … Microdosing testosterone at 1/10th, 1/20th of the dose of men for hyposexuality, to give them some vitality too. I don’t do hormones, but certainly, I follow the space well. And I’m with you. I’ve changed my tune.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah. It’s something that you can optimize very easily, and you should.

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: So Doc, how did you transition from being probably a typical 12-8-6 rep guy at the gym and all that to where you are now? What was the turning point for you? What was the education or your personal experience that shifted your exercise to X3 and understanding all this?

Dr. John Jaquish: So the understanding of variable resistance came out of looking at the OsteoStrong devices, and how they function, and how they work.

I saw people building incredible power by using a very limited range of motion. Sort of the almost-strongest range-of-motion to the strongest range-of-motion. Very little. Maybe in the lower extremities, maybe two inches of range of motion, but thousands of pounds of force. Many multiples of body weight. Eight, nine multiples.

So in this regard, the bone responded well. But I’m looking at little old ladies that have never exercised before, using maybe two times their body weight the first time, because they are isolating the stronger range, and then they build up to six or seven times their body weight.

I thought, “Wow, humans are so powerful in that range-orange of motion had been working out for, at that time, maybe almost 20 years. And, I don’t know, maybe I put on 10 pounds of muscle in 20 years, probably 8 of which had more to do with puberty than had to do with actually gaining anything from exercise.

Even when I played rugby, I was the skinny guy. I was an outside center and a wing. I could play either position, and that’s more like a wide receiver type. So I was thin and I was fast, but yeah. I mean, I could never gain any muscle, and most of the people at the gym who were drug-free were unable to gain really anything.

So I saw them going for years, and years, and years and nothing would change. Nothing. Sometimes they’d get a little fatter, and they’d imagine that it was a muscle that they gained. Oh, or they’re taking the weight-gainer powder. I’m glad that fell out of favor.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: No, people still use it.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s sugar. It’s just sugar.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. I mean, you’ll gain weight all right. But you could just eat a bucket of Snickers bars too because it’s the same nutritional value.

Now, there are genetic outliers, and I didn’t have that recalled out. I went to high school with a guy named Mark. Mark and I started lifting weights at the same time. He was about an inch shorter than me, and maybe 10 pounds heavier when we started.

So, he was always a little stronger-looking. And the guy put on, I don’t know, 45 pounds of muscle in two years. This is a 17-year-old kid, and all of the sudden it was like he was going into the NFL, and I didn’t change at all. We lifted together, we ate together, and all variables were the same.

And I just said, “What the hell are you doing?” And he says, “I don’t know. This is just what happened.” “Okay.” So later on, I discovered that about 1% of the population or less has a different type of tendon layout.

Whereas, here’s my pectoral. The origin is on the sternum, and it connects right here at the top of the humorous bone. However, some people have a mutation so t it connects at the other end of the bone.

And they have this geometry throughout the body, which means they have a lever in the body that the rest of us don’t. That lever is made out of tendons, which is the most elastic material, really, in the human body for sure. It’s even more elastic than bands.

So, it’s like these people have bands built inside of their bodies and I thought, “Well, it’s weird because there’s been band training before.” So, I started looking at all the academic literature. I finished myPh. D. at this point, and I had already invented OsteoStrong.

So I’m looking at band training, more scientifically referred to as variable resistance exercise. All of the studies showed that variable resistance exercise was far more effective for gaining strength and musculature than standard weight training.

And I’m like, “Well, why isn’t this information out there?” So I realized that most of the solutions that were tested were sort of test-rigged kind of things, where they had bars and bands, and very special setups to do this research, but there’s a good consumer product for a high ratio of variable resistance.

There just wasn’t one out there. There weren’t any band-training devices that were serious. There were some that sort of used banding to make it look like people were exercising, but the banding is surgical tubes. So five pounds of resistance, max. So it looks like exercise, but it’s not. And there’s a big market for what I call fake fitness. So it looks like fitness, but it’s really easy, silly, and doesn’t mean anything. So, people buy that-

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: Shake Weight? Shake Weight?

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: How’s that?

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: The Shake Weight is okay?

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. It’s so they can say to their coworkers and friends that they work out at home, even though even they know it’s bulls***. They’re not really people who are working their planks … Well, planking is a great way to pretend you’re exercising. It really doesn’t do , there’s a market there for the people who want to lie to themselves.

The Nature Valley granola bars, it’s the same kind of thing. It’s like, “Oh, look how healthy I am. This is all-natural.” And it’s like, “It’s all-natural sugar.” With refined sugar on top, because they got some …

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: Agave syrup.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Glucose paste holding all that stuff to hold and making it crunchy. So, yeah. I saw the fitness industry as just complete trash, and once I realized what I realized about variable resistance … Even in my research, I documented that you’re seven times stronger here than you are here. Once you know that, why would you ever lift a weight? It does not make sense.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: Yeah. I mean, and I think even the most elite levels of the global gym model have moved that way. Some magnets increase the load as you reach the end of the range of motion or an ideal part of the range of motion. But I mean, simple. A band. It’s simple. A band. Those pieces of equipment cost like $15,000 a pop.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah. There is also an unfortunate over-complication of exercise. Here’s another problem. Gyms will have you believe that you need 10 different machines to work your hamstrings. No, you don’t. You need deadlifts. That’s it. That’s the end of that story, and nothing has ever really compared better to that.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: Don’t take away my Nordic curl.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right. But you know what I mean?

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: Yeah,

Dr. John Jaquish: They’re creating a lot of (beep) to sell. They’re not creating what’s best for you. Here’s another thing, and I say this to physicians all the time. There’s always a new allergy medication that’s popular and everybody’s talking about it. It was Allegra a few years ago. It was Zyrtec.

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: Zyrtec. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. John Jaquish: It was Seldane a few years before that that started causing cardiac problems and the FDA pulled that. But if you go into a hospital, and you can still swallow, and you’re going into anaphylactic shock, they give you Benadryl. Why do they give you Benadryl? Because it works. The other (beep) doesn’t work.

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: And it’s cheaper too.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah, and they don’t have to pay the margins for the intellectual property. So, yeah. Just because something’s being marketed doesn’t mean it’s better. Just because everybody’s using something doesn’t mean it’s better. If it’s better, then it should be documented that it’s better.

Now the difference, as I told you, when I was going around explaining OsteoStrong, physicians signed on real quick because I showed them the evidence.

The problem with the fitness industry is, the people in the fitness industry are stupid. Even when it is dumbed down, the idea that something came from a study is borderline meaningless to them, because they’re incapable of reading studies.

Now, to be fair, in a lot of scientific research, I think academia in general tends to cater to itself and not necessarily … Scientists don’t write studies to be actionable by the general public. They make studies to show their greater understanding to other researchers.

And that’s kind of a shame because it becomes so inaccessible. That was one of my goals when I wrote Weight Lifting is a Waste of Time. I wanted to fully explain what a lot of these studies mean.

I also wanted to explain some of the studies that say meat causes colon cancer. I wanted to explain, they found 1,000 people that ate nitrate meat every day. Every single day for 40 years. So that’s a gas station hotdog. You ate a gas station hotdog every day for 40 years, you probably didn’t do that for health reasons.

And oh, by the way, if somebody made that choice every day for 40 years, they’re probably smoking cigarettes. They’re probably shooting heroin. They’re probably doing a lot of the other things that would be associated with somebody that doesn’t give a (beep) about living or dying. So the fact that they got colon cancer, at a 2% greater rate, it just, I’m rolling my eyes. Yeah, they probably died of overdoses too. This study is just-

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: Yeah. Smoking, drinking, all those other things that go on there. The guy’s going to sit on the couch and-

Dr. John Jaquish: They didn’t control for any of those variables.

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: Yeah, It’s insane.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s, “Did you eat meat or not?” And they found people that specifically ate nitrate meat every day. Amazingly, they found 1,000 people that live like that.

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: Because people who aren’t eating meat, they’re saying, “Oh, I’m going to think …” They’re trying to be healthy, so they may not be smoking and drinking, and doing all these other … So, it’s a healthy-user bias.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s right, and working out. If somebody is eating a gas station hotdog every day, do they work out? Probably not.

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: A silence for a second, Tro? We’re going to get kicked off the air for that.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: No. I mean, the healthy-user bias has corrupted all nutrition data. I think people have just used it to support their mantra. It’s an easy way to sell an idea that you want. You look at observational data, you select something that you want to demonstrate that’s associated with healthy people. So healthy people drive either a BMW, a Lexus, or whatever, a Tesla. Or ain the good doctor’s case, a Lamborghini, I think. A Ferrari, right? Or it’s a Lamborghini, right?

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s a Lamborghini.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: I wonder how you fit in that. I just got to be honest with you. I wonder how the hell you fit in that.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s not a small car.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: Yeah. But-

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: But if you look, what they’re saying, what they want you to think is, a Lamborghini makes you healthy. People who are affluent enough and have the disposable income to afford one of those cars are more likely to be better-educated, and can afford the food, and don’t need to or probably won’t buy a station hotdog.

And they don’t want you to think that. The people who have that message, those scientists, a lot of them have a lot of interests.

This is why I wrote about the biases very recently with Eric Westman, because people don’t realize, they have something to sell. They ave an agenda. I don’t make money when I tell you these people are … I don’t make money. When I tell you, “Don’t eat sugar,” I don’t make money off that.

Dr. John Jaquish: I tell people the same thing. Right. That’s not part of my revenue model. I don’t get anything out of it. So after writing, Weight Lifting is a Waste of Time and coming out with X3 … Also, X3 is super-successful. We’ve sold tens of millions of dollars of product per year.

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: Yeah. I was trying to get one during COVID, and I couldn’t find one anywhere.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah. And it was funny-

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: Doubled up your business.

Dr. John Jaquish: We only ran out for a week here and a week there. We were full-tilt on manufacturing. It was kind of interesting because the demand just went through the roof. But the reason I brought all that up is, the people that are angriest at me are the ones who are angry because they tell them they can’t eat pizza and candy.

And they come up with all kinds of crazy arguments like, “You need carbs to survive.” And they link to some vegan article that says that. And it’s just like, “Hey, this is a marketing ploy to tell people what they want to hear.” You got to keep in mind, there’s a nutrition Ph.D. out there. I won’t mention his name, because I don’t want that loser to get any clicks.

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: Oh, it’s Tro’s friend, probably. Tro’s close with him.

Dr. John Jaquish: No. But this guy, I mean, he’s just selling, “You can eat whatever you want, and you know can be in shape just as long as you have calorie restriction.” So if you’re eating whatever you want, and it’s probably carbohydrates, and then you try and calorie restricts, you will fail. Because you’re constantly telling your body you’re hungrier, and you’re hungrier, and you’re hungrier. No one’s going to succeed in doing that.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: Yeah. So those diets will work for people with exceptional restraint. My wife, bless her soul, eats half a Reese’s … and then leaves the other one-and-a-half, and maybeforgetst about it. She is an anomaly. Right?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. That-

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: She’s an anomaly. She doesn’t exist. In our modern world, everybody’s getting obese. Everybody’s getting overweight. These foods are designed to make us more hungry, and maybe 10% don’t have those traits.

Just like you said, maybe 1% have an insertion in a certain area that makes them hyper-responders. But less than 10%, probably 5%, don’t have voracious appetites. If they were that grizzly bear you talked about, they want to make it. But they’ve been selected over the past 100 years or so, and they’re the ones who do better.

Now, if you look at dieticians, personal trainers, and doctors, much more likely of having anorexia. Much more likely, meaning they have more cerebral restraint over their appetite.

So the thing about this means, the people who are guiding you to eat by counting your calories and including all food are people who have no issue with appetite and who have a serious issue with food. Those are the people, these nutritionists. That guy that you’re talking about probably doesn’t have an appetite issue. He probably could sit down, plug his numbers into some Excel spreadsheet, and just-

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: And he has so much muscle mass to visceral fat ratio that he can get away with it too when he does.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Well, this guy’s chubby. So, he’s full of (beep). But it’s like one of those situations where I think he’s just figured out he can make money by telling people what they want hear.

Dr. to Tro Kalayjian: Yeah.

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: And by causing conflict to get clicks

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, Here’s another example. There’s an X3 trainer that … So, the guy only trains people online with X3. He markets all of his training like, “Do you want to get in shape but you don’t want to give up pizza and cake?” He’s like, “I got what you need.” He’s very salesy with his presentation, and he doesn’t do very well.

So one day I called him and I go, “Hey, you’re not doing so great.” And he says, “How did you know?” And I said, “Well, let me tell you what happens. You get a client, and all they want to do is eat trash.

And then when you tell them they can eat their garbage food, but in very small quantities because they need their nutritious food to build muscle, and there’s not a lot of room left if you’re trying to lose body fat at the same time.” So, yeah.

He says, “Yeah, you can have a Twinkie, but maybe once a week.” That’s not what they want to hear.

So I said, “The way you’re marketing to people, you’re going to get every loser and excuse-maker. People who are self-sabotaging only.

You’re not going to get any real people, because any real people are going to know that’s an idiotic idea.” That you can keep eating the same foods that got you fat, and somehow you won’t be fat anymore. Not going to work that way.

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: Yeah. There’s so much more. So I have to ask you in closing, because I know we don’t want to keep you too long. We know you make more per hour than we do. So, you have a new person coming in. They’re 300 pounds, diabetic, they hate to work out, and you have to advise them. How do you start them out? What’s your technique to get them at least thinking about exercise and activity?

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, I don’t know if I’d be the best guy to ask this question too, because I don’t allow people to make excuses. You’ll find a way to get it done or you’ll find an excuse.

Either way, you’re just making a decision. And if you have an excuse, your decision is, “I’m going to continue to be a loser because of this reason.” And now that I told you that, you’re either going to walk out and say, “This Dr. Jaquish guy’s a real (beep),” or I’ll inspire you.

But before I let him talk, I go, “Listen, if you’re this overweight, it’s not just because of nutrition control. You are medicating something psychological with food.”

Obese people are whatever. Reliving something, or every time they get anxious or something like that they go for a couple of bags of chips or whatever it is. And as soon as I say that the guard comes down, and they’re like, “Yep.” Yeah. They don’t have to tell me what it is, but they have to come to grips with that and decide that they’re just sick and tired of being sick and tired.

And it’s an easy decision to make as long as they’re willing to, instead of white-knuckle it, just admit that they’ve got problems.

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: Yeah. Just like With alcohol or anything else. Right?

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: You’re covering up something, and you’re trying to figure out where that base is.

Dr. John Jaquish: Exactly.

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: And then what we find is, when we get them just doing a little bit, then they go, “Hey, I could do that.” Then they can pick it up. But you tell them, “You got to work out two hours five days a week,” they’re like, “Forget it. I can’t even think about it.”

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah. I think nutrition comes first for the weight people, and the working is just a way to fast-track results with nutrition.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: I think it’s a mental health impact. I mean, I know you probably focus on bone, and metabolic, but I’m a big believer that exercise is mental health. So I’m 100% in agreement with the message which is, the people who have the biggest difficulty losing and maintaining weight have typically unanswered stress and anxiety,

These will make a weight loss journey very hard because you have fundamentally a nutrition program, a behavioral program, or both. Most people think they just need nutrition. They just think, “Just tell me what to eat, how much to eat.” But what you’re suggesting, and which I 100% agree with, is, there’s a lot more. Right?

Dr. John Jaquish Yeah.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: There’s a lot more. If you have yo-yo there’s a reason for that. Right?

Dr. John Jaquish: Right.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: You’ve lost the weight, but why’d you put it back on? Why can’t you keep it off? Why do your habits change? Why does your behavior change? Usually at the root of that is what you’re saying, mental health struggle.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: But let me tell you, I’m a huge believer in exercise being a mental health tool. I mean, you probably are an engineer, and tell me, “Well, it’s bone health, metabolic health.” But I’m convinced it’s a mental health tool. What do you think?

Dr. John Jaquish: I completely agree with that. Yeah. What I like about X3 and this population is, you see results quickly enough. Most people lift weights because … The tendon thing I was talking about. is 99% of people, it doesn’t matter what the hell they do. They won’t see results. Well, that’s just depressing.

And that almost guarantees people are just going to quit the whole thing, the nutrition stuff also. With X3, even if they’re overweight, they can feel the muscles underneath all their body fat getting harder and larger all the time. So all of a sudden the subject that irritates them the most is their health, which they feel is out-of-control, now they’re controlling it.

So if they can put their hand on that steering wheel and feel that for a couple of weeks, now we’ve got a chain reaction going the other way.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: So what you’re talking about is empowerment.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah..

Dr. Bria.Lenzkes: Hope and empowerment.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right? You’re saying psychological. Yeah. This is completely psychological. They see, “Oh, wow. It can affect my health. Let’s see how hard I can crank this lever.”

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: As you suggested, they have to first let their guard down.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: So they let their guard down, and then they see results, and they trust that process. That’s some insight there.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: Yeah. The other thing we started with that is a huge deal is talking about just sit-to-stand, stand-to-sit, all these. That has a huge implication for survival, like whether you’re going to hospice or not when you get to the ER. If you can stand up on your own, or whether you need max support, or you can’t get out of bed by yourself. So those are things people don’t think about until it’s too late and they just can’t do it anymore. But if we can prevent that, we’re doing our patients some help.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s right.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: All right.

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: So Doc, how do people track you down?

Dr. John Jaquish: So, my last name. As we laughed about it, we all have last names that are a little complicated. So, Jaquish is not easy to guess how to spell. So my website is just doctorj.com. D-O-C-T-O-R, the letter j, .com. You can get to all my social media outlets there. I do the most on Instagram. I just like the platform better. So if you’re going to follow me on something, Instagram is it.

Dr. Tro Kalayjian: Guys, get the book _Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time. The X3, I know many of my patients have the X3. So, Dr. J., I appreciate it.

Dr. John Jaquish: Thanks for having me. This was fun.

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: Hey Doc, thanks for joining us. That was great. Great information, great stuff.

Dr. John Jaquish: Awesome.

Dr. Brian Lenzkes: Best of luck to you with everything, and thanks for … We’ll wait for your next invention to come out, and we’ll have you come back on and talk about it.

Dr. John Jaquish: Okay. Well, the next thing around the corner is a new general practitioner group that is actually in the understanding of proper nutrition. So, these are a group of doctors that are not going to prescribe statins. They’re going to tell you the truth about your cholesterol, which is, there’s no such thing as bad cholesterol. And they will be very aggressive with hormone optimization. So I’m getting this put together, and this will probably launch in the next few weeks. But it’ll be great to have a lot of doctors out there …

And this is all through telemedicine. A lot of doctors out there are starting to convey the right message. Because if somebody wants to be part of the group, they have to agree to this understanding.

And I think that’s going to be phenomenal because wesawsician group yet. We’ve seen different physicians, but I think that has quite a bit of marketing power, and I think I’ll be able to get quite a bit of press for it and increase people’s education about whatwhat optimumritiooptimum ration

Brian Lenzkes: Awesome. Sounds like a plan. Grab one of those Docs, and come on, and we’ll chitchat. That’ll be fun.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, that will be.